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Blair hints eu president

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   http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/index.cfm?id=443752003

http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/index.cfm?id=443752003

Blair hints at new role as EU president

ALISON HARDIE POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT


TONY Blair yesterday increased speculation that he wants to become the president of Europe when he claimed that the European Union must speak with a single voice on foreign policy.

The call was the clearest sign yet that Mr Blair could pitch to become the future president of Europe after stepping down as Prime Minister.

In the wake of the splits over the war in Iraq, Mr Blair told an EU summit in Athens that an enlarged union of 25-member states needed a more powerful voice on the world stage.

He said that voice should be provided by a full-time EU president, responsible to the member governments, giving "strategic direction".

Mr Blair attempted to use the informal summit in the Greek capital to put the damaging political disputes over Iraq to one side. He insisted that the EU now needed a figurehead, or, as a Whitehall official put it, "someone the White House can call".

The Conservatives claimed Mr Blair’s suggestion amounted to a "sell-out" of Britain’s interests. Michael Ancram, the shadow foreign secretary, said that the divisions over Iraq had exposed the idea of a single foreign policy as a fantasy.

"It is a sad reflection on the Prime Minister that after the courage he has shown on Iraq, he is prepared to sell out fundamental British interests in order to rebuild relations with Europe," he said. "To cap it all, the betrayal is compounded by his ambition to create a job for himself as president of Europe."

Mr Blair’s idea received a mixed reaction at the summit - with Romano Prodi, the commission’s president, clearly fearing the move could undermine his own role.

He told a press conference in Athens that huge strides had been made in attempts to streamline the EU to make it more efficient and effective from next year, when ten new member states join, creating a 25-nation bloc.

But there were still difficulties over the idea of a "president of Europe".

However, there was almost unanimous agreement that the EU should have what amounts to a "foreign minister" - a single foreign policy supremo, combining the jobs held by Chris Patten, the external relations commissioner, and by Javier Solana, the EU’s high representative for foreign and security policy, effectively working under the control of EU governments.

The Athens summit did not resolve whether the new foreign minister would report to the commission or the member states - another example of the battle still ahead over who has real political control in the EU.

"This was not a meeting for making decisions. It was a situation report and there is still some way to go," said one EU official.

A Downing Street spokesman said a "president of Europe" was also needed to replace the current system of "musical chairs", under which each EU government spends half a year nominally in charge of policy before handing over to the next.

"We need a figurehead to provide strategic direction to the EU," he said. "The current system was fine when there were just six member states, and even works currently with 15. But it will not work when we are 25."

The debate on the EU’s future was followed by the formal signing of the Accession Treaty, which will usher ten countries into the club. The fifteen-nation bloc becomes 25 from 1 May, 2004, adding Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta and Cyprus in the most ambitious round of expansion in the EU’s 50-year history.

The summit in Athens was the first meeting of the leaders since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, and there was a conscious effort not to replay the row between the UK and France and Germany over whether it was right to launch military action alongside the United States without specific United Nations’ sanction.

The summit was marred by violence, with Greek police saying they arrested 106 anti-Iraq war demonstrators after two hours of violence.

Protesters threw explosives, stones, bricks and paint at police and the Italian, French, British and US embassies.


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